#panthera lineage

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Phylogenetic wild cat tournament - FINAL

Panthera, ocelot, bay cat, lynx, leopard cat, domestic cat, puma and caracal lineages

Family: Felidae - THE BEST CAT

Genus: Panthera, Neofelis, Leopardus, Catopuma, Pardofelis, Lynx, Prionailurus, Otocolobus, Felis, Herpailurus, Puma, Acinonyx, Caracal & Leptailurus

My followers have a type, I think.

Snow leopard

Andean mountain cat

[fatal-blow]

Some design/reference/practice for one of the lineages in Esurience, known as the Kiil. their history/culture etc is inspired by real life taxonomy and the evolutionary history of panthera in general, so all the names and whatnot are from their binomial names! left to right top to bottom is jaguar, lion, tiger, clouded leopard, snow leopard, and actual leopard.

[pine-arten]

More differences on different slugs!

headcanons under the cut

if you didn't read my previous post on slugcat headcanons, then you prolly should as i'll leave out some stuff i explained there.

basically though, there is two slugcat species or subspecies. still not sure what they count as. We have slugcat felis (surv, monk, riv, saint) and slugcat panthera (arti, hunter, spear)

Spearmaster and rivulet are modified, so it's more saying what type was used as a base.

Gourmand is a special case, as they are actually a hybrid! The hybridization caused some weird stuff to happen, and they actually have a form of gigantism. It also caused them to have a weird digestive system, letting them eat meat but not process it well. This is probably the reason behind their size as well. Gourmand is not only fat though, they are buff! it's just not visible. They're like the equivalent of a strongman.

Saint is a bit special, as they're so far in the future. They're still felis, just how it evolves in the future! I'm not sure if it world require it's own taxon name, though.

It requires going into lineage trees, but a rough timeline chart should explain things.

Panthera and Felis were seperate, but ended up merging together (gourmand is an example of this). And over time, Felis evolved to deal with the cold. Leading to saint. Thick, long fur, and a larger body do this.

Saint is likely also modified as well, mostly their grapple tongue.

Anyways. This also shows the general stature of the slugcats. Not heights, but their builds at least. Some of their colors / patterns were changed / removed for better visibility, as well as being easier to draw. I kept important details though!

[3surience]

I have many more!! For different societies/countries we've got (so far):

Solvan; sun worshipping, magic loving, populated by faeblooded humans

Don'ji; a mishmash of freed slaves (mostly human, some fae, gnole, kiil), extensive trade networks

Cress; almost entirely light fae, mostly mind their own business, high control society

Sonus; entirely dark fae, split from Cress and they don't get along

The Land of Ava; conquering empire composed of 6+ different peoples and cultures (Dakshi, Uttan, Puvr, Pashk, various gnoles), Uttan led, getting real with the misogyny

And then others are still being cobbled together, but each cat lineage is roughly a different society in and of itself (just they're mostly over on the west side)

--

And the different bloodlines:

Human; weird primates

Light/Dark/Sea Fae; short, colourful magical folk

Giants; eats rocks, big ol horns

Machairo/Panthera/Felinae Kiil; three large, vaguely related groups of cat anthros with multiple lineages within each

Gnoles; cursed (??) hyena looking boys

And some extras kicking around from different parts of the planet

[six-legged-sea-leopard]

btw kairoh gets mistaken for an american lion allll the time because 1) machairodus genus cats have long tails like panthera cats and 2) you can’t see her sabers when her mouth is closed. so if you don’t know what youre looking for in the skull/limb/lumbar anatomy you’d think she was a panthera genus cat. this upsets her very very much. not only is she a sabercat, not a panther, she’s from one of the most ancient and well-established sabercat lineages of all time god damn you

[exemplarybehaviour]

i regret looking at the notes on this post because i am in tears. "my hypothesis is that--" babes please remember how you learned to make a hypothesis back in third grade. you can LOOK UP what the gene is! you don't have to just MAKE UP FACTS to show off how smart you are! PLEASE actually click through links before speculating or just making claims, jfc

the paper OP links is a review on the evolution & genetics of mammilian coat pigmentation by Eizirik and Trindade. Using control+f for "placenta" easily gets you the passage in question:

Using domestic cat pedigrees, Eizirik et al. (108) identified two genomic regions associated with variation in coat patterning and proposed a two-step model for mammalian pattern formation. The first step involves the establishment of a prepattern in the skin early in embryonic development, and the second is the differential pigmentation of coat areas delimited by the prepattern. Kaelin & Barsh (109) further developed and discussed this model, which served as a basis for the discovery and characterization of the first genes involved in this process (56). One of them was TAQPEP (or LVRN), an aminopeptidase that was until then known only as an important player in human placentation. When this gene is mutated in domestic cats and cheetahs, coat patterns become less organized (i.e., decrease their periodicity), indicating that it acts in the first step of pattern formation (prepattern establishment) (56). However, how an aminopeptidase that is essential to maternal–fetal interaction in humans acts in the establishment of coat markings in felids is still unknown.

So basically, Eizirik et al. suggest that in their model for cat coat development, there's some sort of establishment of what the pattern will look like during embryonic skin development, which they call "prepatterning." That "56" citation leads to a paper that found that two genes (Taqpep and Edn3) contributing to tabby pattern variation.

So what is this Taqpep? According to 56 (Kaelin et al), it's "a type II membrane-spanning protein of the M1 aminopeptidase family, whose members are characterized by the presence of GAMEN exopeptidase (SAMEN in Taqpep) and HEXXHX18E zinc-binding motifs in their extracellular domains," which is a ton of jargon that's way outside my area of knowledge. But, long story short: it's a guy that hangs out on membranes and does stuff to proteins. There's lots of different aminopeptidases, but this specific one was previous only found in human embryos (x). given humans and cats have a common ancestor, it's not weird we have some of the same genes. it is always pretty interesting when our same genes seem to do different things!

also, BTW, here's the Kaelin et al proposal for what role Taqpep plays in skin development:

i wanted to see if anyone else was publishing on this, and i found a write up by the same guy as the review (Eizirik) on a study on Taqpep's role in tiger stripes:

In addition, this finding can be used to investigate convergent evolution among the cat species for which phenotype-altering Taqpep mutations have been described (Fig. 1). [...] Now, Sagar et al. (8) report an additional mutation in this [Taqpep] gene, in a third felid species, which is implicated in a similar phenotype (Fig. 1). Interestingly, these species belong to different evolutionary lineages within the family Felidae, with the Panthera genus (to which the tiger belongs) being the most divergent among present-day cat clades. This supports the hypothesis that the mechanism underlying the shape of felid markings is conserved among cat species, and that it was already present in the common ancestor of all present-day lineages of the Felidae, over 10 million years ago. An additional aspect is that these felid coat pattern-altering mutations all seem to induce loss of function of the Taqpep protein, with no apparent effect on other systems. This is intriguing, since this gene (aka Laeverin) has been reported to be a key player in human placentation (14), posing the questions of whether it has completely different functions in cats and humans, and what its functions may be in other groups of mammals. Additional studies, exploring other mammalian systems, are required to address this problem.

so, it appears to me that the link between the human function of Taqpep and the cat function is just something Eizirik is really intrigued by, rather than something the researchers in the cited studies are actually interested.

as several people in the notes have pointed out, it is a common pattern for the same genes to have different functions in different species, simply because they've had millions of years to change and repurpose all sorts of things. Taqpep isn't a magic "make pigments appear" gene and it's not a magic "make a placenta" gene-- it's a tiny membrane protein that slots into how a huge number of different genes work together to make more obvious phenotypes. perhaps cats simply do not need it for placentation, or they have another gene that now serves the same function. maybe millions upon millions of years ago, it did something completely different in the human-cat common ancestor. my point is, we don't know, and none of the publications i've cited speculate because apparently no one has looked into it (or if they have, Eizirik is not citing them and i didn't see them when I looked to see who was citing the pigmentation papers). there's multiple comments in the notes like "oh, it's probably this" based on literally nothing and apparently this is a huge pet peeve of mine!!!! did you know you can click the link and view what the gene is and what it codes for!!!!!!!!!

also people keep bringing up lines of blaschko/the human stripes post, which i also did a write up on because there's a ton of misinfo out there on it

was browsing thru papers about animal coloration and learned that a gene that helps make the placenta in humans (the thing that keeps you alive when you're a fetus in the womb) also exists in cheetahs, but in the cheetahs, it just controls the placement of their spots

How does THAT happen?!

[baronboar]

Morphology of Gurav's Beast-Folk

I've introduced the races of my setting culturally in the past, but I've never talked about how they physically appear & vary! Here's the main four featured in Regicide:

Mustel

The Mustel are, like all of the beast-folk based on a number of animals from a single taxonomic category. The Mustel of course are based on mustelids! The word 'Mustel' is Pantheran in origin, but in the Mustel language, Therian, they call themselves The Neulah.

The main species from our world that inspired the Mustel are pine martens, sables, wolverines, and raccoons. Depending on where they hail, fur colours vary, but save those who live in secluded colonies, the majority of them have flexible bodies, short & strong limbs, and paws built for climbing. Mustel are omnivores who consume fruit, fleshy vegetables, seeds/nuts and insect meat. Their natural adaptations have fine tuned their minds into deadly weapons, creating many powerful archanists, but they will usually prefer to climb or run from danger than fight, as many of them prefer to be gatherers rather than hunters.

Panthera

The Panthera of course relate to their namesake, panthera. 'Pan' meaning divine lineage, and 'thera' referring to the colour of the sun.

The Pantheran homeland ranges from jungle to savannah, desert to tundra, so the possible shapes and cultures range wildly. While most that have travelled South to new lands are like lions with pale fur & long wiry manes, others may be orange with dark stripes like tigers or even fully black furred like panthers. Panthera are HUGE carnivores with bodies built for overpowering prey. They are known for taking down giant beetles and elephants with ease, using a mixture of persistent chasing, retractable razor claws, and their powerful jaws to hunt. They usually hunt within prides, but those who live in the tundra and jungles divide and conquer as solo hunters. All Panthera have a mutation much like gigantism, causing them to reach incredible heights due to their 200+ year lifespans, the tallest recorded being Gurav's King Bernard at 20ft. As an added note, much like lions, they display sexual dimorphism, with female Panthera not growing manes. Many tinctures and potions exist to assist those who wish to grow manes, as well as shed them.

Wulpen

The Wulpen, known in their dialect of Therian as The Ix, are based on the Vulpez family. Specifically, the fennec fox & the hoary fox. They hail from the deserts of Swef and have a small habitat compared to the other beast-folk here.

Wulpen are carnivores who's diets in the modern age is primarily fish and other meats of the sea. Due to their small arid landscape, with the only relief being deep fissures and a single river, the Apophis Nile, the Wulpen have taken to the sea as their home, with their government being made up of the most respected pirate lord in a yearly ritual of mob rule. Wulpen are small, having evolved to hunt prey through speed and fast reaction time, once standing on the edges of rivers to leap up and dive into the water when their prey passed by. Now, they rely on fishing nets and spears.

They have a beard like scruff of fluffly long hair along their jaws and at the base of the neck, some even growing long fur on the chin and muzzle like a bearded dog. They are very proud of their longer fur, and will groom and braid this fur regardless of gender.

Dentar

Known as the Gilter in their native language, Gilres, the Dentar are based on the order Rodentia, more specifically the various species of rat.

As omnivores, Dentar are adaptable, though culturally have drawn a line between invertebrates as food, and vertebrates being taboo to hunt and eat. Aside from that, any vegetation is fair game for these people, as they are particularly hardy, even faced with rotten meat. With keen noses and even more keen hearing, by nature Denar have a more fearful disposition when faced by predation, but their history of dragon hunting and conquest would suggest otherwise.

As one of the two natives of Gurav, Dentar have been heavily effected by the Pantheran occupation. But, when they arrived the Dentar were still struggling from the long-term effects of hundreds of years of war between each other. So they only existed as small insular clans that shied away when visitors arrived, and were not seen as a threat to the Panthera. As a final note, Dentar have unusually long tails these scaled appendages are fully prehensile, and believed to be helpful for divining the truth when faced by deception. Or in some cases even seen as a conduit to god.

-

That's all for now! Thanks for reading!! 💖

[bunjywunjy]

why are cheetahs not technically big cats? is it just because they're weird as hell or do they not meet some big cat criteria?

so the thing about Big Cats is that they’re all closely related members of the genus Panthera! 

because they’re all part of the same lineage, they share a lot of traits like the ability to roar.

and cheetahs are actually members of a completely different cat lineage altogether, the genus Acinonyx!

they’re not very closely related to the big cats at all and are actually most closely related to Pumas, which you can totally see if you stack them up next to each other and squint really hard. 

it’s okay though, the cheetah can still be the biggest cat in our hearts :’)

[iiiridium]

okay i wanna write more about that pokemon post

first of all i stand by egg groups not defining species. in the real world the biological species concept states that a species is defined by being reproductively isolated, meaning it can't produce fertile offspring with any other species. however, there are plenty of groups of organisms that we consider species that are perfectly capable of reproducing with different species and producing fertile offspring, leading to hybridization and introgression zones and etc etc etc. there are lots of species concepts such as ecological (species is defined by their niche in their environment) or morphological (based on the physical form)

to explain in the simplest words why the biological species concept doesn't work with pokemon: skitty and wailord. there's no way they're the same species just because they share the field egg group (why is wailord in the field egg group anyway)

regional variants are the same species as their standard versions, but probably have a subspecies name that's different. maybe scientific names work like [genus] [species] [individual pokemon and/or variant] where like, meowth would have the same genus/species as persian, but the parts of the evolutionary line and the variants would have that third part being different. panthera elegans primis (normal meowth) vs panthera elegans alolaprimis (alola meowth)

typing can be taxonomically linked, but can also be convergently evolved. pikachu and dedenne obviously have a common ancestor that was electric type but alolan raichu being psychic type doesn't mean it has any close evolutionary link with like, medicham or something

grouping pokemon into types at all is primarily a human invention - yeah all pokemon can manipulate energy/elements in certain ways, and will be better at certain attacks than others, but exactly what types a pokemon is is mostly a game mechanic. like, drapion is poison/dark, but there's no reason it shouldn't also be proficient at bug type moves because a) skorupi is a bug type and b) drapion is still very bug-like.

plus if we wanna get into splitting territory i bet in-universe theres people who argue there should be a sound type (who could deny exploud is a prime example of it, as well as the sing attack?) or light type, among others. and then the lumpers are like "theres no functional difference from normal type so why bother splitting them up"

of course all of this assumes arceus and/or mew didn't just create all the pokemon in their current state, in which case taxonomic lineages don't matter because everything is equally "related"

and THEN we get into the issue of man-made pokemon like porygon. that's probably a whole different post.

[olmluvr]

"feline" is not a taxonomic term, but an adjective describing cats. to answer your question, let's dig into the taxonomy of cats as we know them.

there are a lot of animals in the order carnivora, including cats. there are two big suborders in carnivora, which are feliformia and caniformia. basically, we divide carnivores on whether they are closer to cats or dogs.

(credit valkenburgh et al)

the blue shows feliform families, and the red caniform families. the more branches two families have in common, the more recently they shared a common ancestor. there are a lot of animals we consider cat-like which are not cats, like mongooses and hyenas. there are lots of general distinctions we can make between feliforms and caniforms, on the basis of both morphology and lifestyle, but the one true dividing characteristic is the structure of the part of the skull surrounding the inner ear.

we don't have a definitive common ancestor of feliforms in the fossil record, but this phylogeny shows that nandiniidae diverged the earliest. we would call them "basal", because they are closest to the base of the tree. the family nandiniidae contains only one species, the african palm civet.

moving further, we can look at the family felidae. this family actually contains all the animals we think of today as cats, both wild and domestic.

(credit johnson et al)

now, this one is a little trickier to read if you aren't familiar with phylogenies (i couldn't find a good one with pictures), but some of the species names should be at least a little recognizable. at the top are members of the genus felis, which contains our modern housecats and their relatives. felis catus itself does not appear because it diverged so recently that it would be difficult to show. the further down the list of species you go, the longer ago the species diverged, and the less recently the cat has shared a common ancestor with domestic cats. the most divergent is the branch which contains lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, snow leopards, and clouded leopards. (this image is a couple of years out of date - newer phylogenies have led us to reclassify uncia uncia (the snow leopard) as panthera uncia). the closest branch to felis is that containing several small asian wildcats, including the pallas and fishing cats. there are a lot of traits that are common to all of these cats, including but not nearly limited to: digitigrade feet, a scratchy tongue, whiskers, and a vomeronasal organ (similar to snakes and lizards, this allows them to "taste the air"). cats also lack the ability to taste sugar.

the earliest known members of the family felidae are members of the genus proailurus, who lived in europe and asia around 20 to 30 million years ago.

(credit werdelin et al)

here is an artist's depiction of proailurus lemanensis. so cute!

are we done here? of course not! we can narrow our cat search down even further to the subfamily felinae. these are cats with retractable claws and an ossified hyoid (bone in the throat).

(the further i go, the harder it is to find legible diagrams. credit wikimedia commons)

if we want to be pedantic (and i do), this is not a phylogeny but a cladogram, because it is not time-calibrated. it reads exactly the same, though. this is basically just the top half of the phylogeny we saw before. these genera of cats are all more closely related to domestic cats than the pantherinae lineage, which is what we consider the big cats. though we call it a big cat, cheetahs are actually in felinae!

the oldest known member of felinae is pratifelis martini, from around 10-11 million years ago in kansas. i do not have a picture, because it is only known from one jawbone. other early members of felinae include pristifelis, from 6-9 million years ago in southern europe and southwest asia, and the american cheetah, miracinonyx, from 2.5-0.02 million years ago.

let's take this a little farther, and look only at the genus felis! felis contains several species of wildcat, including the african wildcat, from which housecats were domesticated. i don't have a phylogeny for this one, because no one makes a phylogeny of just one genus. felis likely diverged around 6-7 million years ago. there is one extinct member known from this genus, called felis lunensis. it is known from europe around 2.5 million years ago, and could be the ancestor of the modern european wildcat, felis silvestris.

(credit peter cairns)

lacking a picture for felis lunensis, this is its closest living relative, the european wildcat. a little bigger and meaner than a housecat, but otherwise hard to distinguish.

i hope this answers your very simple question about cats.

studying for invertebrate paleontology final. please ask any and all questions about paleontology, evolution, and biology, and i will answer as well as i (and my bestie "online resources") can!

[justanotherpersonsuniverse]

Jess internally: ok this girl is clever look at her charming everyone but not me I’m strong I wont let a pretty face stop me I’m better then that IM A SUPER HERO

Juleka: hey

Jess: hi (:

Jess internally: f u c k

Also

Jess: these heroes are tricky I shouldn’t trust them right away they do seem rather skilled tho but I have no proof there actually trust worthy

Panthera: hey~

Jess: h E y w E s h OUL d bE f ri en d s p ls

Sparrow: I can’t out myself as Sparrow and ruin the entire set up that is and has been the lineage of different Knight Owls and Sparrows or else-

Panthera: Hey-

Sparrow: Hi I’m Jess can I have your number-

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Phylogenetic wild cat tournament

Panthera lineage - Final

Subfamily: Pantherinae - THE BEST BIG CAT

Genus: Panthera and Neofelis

Depth: 3 (2 wins away from championship)

Although the term "big cat" is usually restricted to the Panthera genus, here i use it as the synonym of the Panterinae subfamily - even more since it's an often generally used word for every larger sized felines including pumas and cheetahs or even more species.

Bigs cats are famous of their ability to roar, thanks to the anatomy of their throats - however in reality this isn't true of either of our finalists, only the other Panthera species: tiger, lion, jaguar and leopard.

Snow leopard

Clouded leopard

[fatal-blow]

haha yeah im fine*

*currently intensely researching the various species of cats, including taxonomy, lineage, etc. because ive always desperately wanted to worldbuild a setting where real world facts (about cats. very specifically about cats.) inform things within it. for instance, cultures and settlements and their relation to one another would be relative to how felids evolved and dispersed (eg cloud leopards evolve before big cats like panthera, so in the setting they have the oldest settlements, with ties to the later panthera settlements), or for simpler example, using real world populations of living cat species to determine the populations of cat people in the world. and, like, it kinda drives me fucking nuts how many guys have the species name spelaea. at least three, but the taxonomy is so confusing and varies so much from source to source that maybe there's five. or seven. but three is already too many. spelaease stop.

[mirtadraws]

New project! Cat icons. Post 1/2: portraits.

The sizes are not to scale ofc - each icon is 100x100px. I've been reading about cat evolution and here are small pixel drawings of 1 cat from each of the 8 extant Felidae lineages: 1 ocelot lineage: ocelot 2 leopard cat lineage: leopard cat 3 bay cat lineage: Borneo bay cat 4 domestic cat lineage: domestic cat 5 lynx lineage: Eurasian lynx 6 caracal lineage: caracal 7 cougar lineage: cougar 8 panthera lineage: lion

[thalasseus]

Hmm lets go for page 45 and 195!

45 is the Sunda Tiger (panthera tigris sondaica), the smallest of the tiger subspecies!

and 195 is the Indochinese Jungle Cat (felis chaus fulvidina), subspecies of jungle cat! of the "wildcat lineage" so looks similar-ish to domestic cats

[synapsid-taxonomy]

So there are two subspecies of cave lion! Molecular phylogenetic work supports previous morphological observations that Eurasian and Beringean cave lions formed distinct lineages, sharing a common ancestor to the exclusion of African lions (and diverging before the MRCA of extant lions). The estimated mtDNA divergence time between cave lions and African lions is 1.85 million years ago, supporting Panthera spelaea as a distinct species (under the phylogenetic species concept).

Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a single mention of Panthera atrox anywhere...